Ever since we finished up the vanity overlay and the stump stool I’ve been twiddling my fingers as Whitney’s been full-steam ahead working on the various painting projects and ruffle curtain. Well, not really – someone’s gotta watch right? Thank goodness I’m back in the game since this bathroom still needs some power tools and a little manly ingenuity to help finish it off and solve one of the problems that helped prompt this whole peacock-themed makeover in the first place.

Now, bear in mind, the bathroom is quite small. At just over 32 square feet of floor space (most of it taken up by the regular bathroom necessities), it’s a little difficult to snap pictures at an angle that helps you see what’s going on in here, especially since so many of the angles are right at the window. In any case, you’ll notice that the bathroom window encroaches on the tub area, making placement of a traditional spring rod a bit precarious. It’s bugged me ever since we re-tiled the shower walls because there’s no good place to put the rod – and most of the time it’s up at an angle (not parallel with the ceiling), which doesn’t look great. Then there’s the whole issue of the ugly spring rod and the fact that because of the rod placement the curtain floats above the floor. So top of my priority list for this project was finding a solution that solved a few of these problems. We walked many an aisle at BBB, Walmart, Target, Ross, and the other usual places and couldn’t find anything that was either in our budget or looked half-way decent. It wasn’t until we were utterly lost on the lower floor of Ikea that we stumbled upon our answer. The Kvartal glide with it’s ceiling mount option would work great for getting the rod away from the window and make opening and closing the curtain a breeze compared to that pesky joint in the middle of a spring rod. Most of the parts are sold a la carte so we picked up two rods (one was 4 inches too short so we got a second to join together), and a few ceiling mount units.

The only thing that Ikea doesn’t have is good instructions on mounting it to your ceiling. In fact, in true Ikea style the instructions are little more than doodles you have to figure out. So with not much direction I went upstairs to see if I was lucky enough to have studs on the other side of the drywall where the rod needed to go. No such luck.

I needed something that would hold this rod onto drywall only, so I turned to toggle bolts. Have you ever used these? My dad always had a drawer of them and I really didn’t know what they were for, but I liked to open and close the spring bolt pieces. The basic idea is that you push the closed spring bolt through a hole you’ve drilled and once the bolt gets through to the other side of the dry wall, it will spring open. Once the bolt is through, you tighten the screw until it holds tight. I put in three mounts, one right in the middle with the other two about three inches from each of the walls. As far as I can tell from the Ikea sketch, they want you to leave a few inches between the wall and the rail, but I wanted mine to go all the way so I just ignored that. I measured 59.5 inches as my opening and divided that in two to get the size of pieces my rails needed to be. I then cut down my rails – making the joint go right in the middle. Using the tool that comes with the set from Ikea, I then attached the rail to the mounts. It’s really not pretty to look at now, but it’s solving all the problems we’ve had before, and it’ll look dynamite once the shower curtain goes up later this week.

Update:Want to see how it all turned out? We’ve posted the final reveal and cost break down for the kid’s peacock bathroom here.

We’re on Cloud Nine over here today, thanks to a panel of judges at Not Just a Housewife picking our Beachy Glam Master Bedroom as one of the 6 best DIY projects of 2011. When we entered, along with 774 others, we figured it’d be a shot in the dark since there are so many great DIY projects out there, but we were pleasantly surprised to be included. Sweet! General voting is going on now until Friday (the Thirteenth – that doesn’t sound too lucky now does it?) to determine the best of the best. You can vote once per day until then, and let’s suffice it to say that we’d appreciate your vote to help us win a bundle of DIY goodies to keep our shelves stocked of some cool supplies. Click here to head over and vote. We’ll be back tomorrow with an explanation of how this photo has anything to do with home decor, a peacock bathroom, or decorating in general. Or does it?

We left you hanging on Wednesday in the middle of our bathroom vanity makeover and ever since we’ve been up to our elbows in sawdust, stain, and general messiness. As you’ve seen, we were inspired by the Faux Barn Wood Vanity from Rustic Furniture that you’ve seen in our peacock mood board. This is the one- Of course the price tag of this vanity ranges between $675 and $1350, so ordering this online was a bit out of the question. Dustin’s solution was to change what we already had by doing an overlay of wood right on top of the old oak cabinets. You can read all about his thought process here. Of course, by the time we had thought of the overlay, it had been painted and repainted until it looked like this.On our last post, Dustin had covered most of it with cedar fencing from The Home Depot. He just had to figure out the doors and I had to work on the finishing touches. Dustin used the old doors as templates for the new ones. He cut 3” strips of cedar for the trim for the edges and then filled them in using planks of wood. He held it altogether using strips of cedar on the back (where it wouldn’t show or stop the door from closing) and fastened them together using screws before adding some hinges. While he finished his part, I sampled various Minwax wood stains: English Chestnut, Special Walnut, and Ebony. Oh, and look – Cuties are on sale and I have a coupon. Mental note to pick some up. While the Special Walnut and the English Chestnut look fairly similar, we ended up going with the Walnut since it had less of an orange tint to it. Before staining, I busted out my brand new Christmas tool: A Designed By Her hand sander made by Walnut Creek. While both Dustin and I made fun of the fact that someone has created tools for women (as if women can’t use normal tools), I was excited to use it since it boasted of both a “soft grip”, and lovely pink color. I deem it the Easy-Bake Oven of tools, as it’s fun to use, has an element of danger, and due to lack of power I can’t do too much damage. Sadly, these tools still produce sawdust – now that would be a product worth purchasing. My method for staining was a simple foam brush application followed by a good rag rub. Once Dustin got the doors back on it looked like this- If sitting and staring at it for hours didn’t involve me on the floor of the bathroom, I’d be here all day. After all our pitiful attempts at making this over, I’m finally in love with the bathroom vanity!

Coming up soon will be a new home-made shower curtain, re-purposed light fixture, and peacock decor – oh my!

Update:Want to see how it all turned out? We’ve posted the final reveal and cost break down for the kid’s peacock bathroom here.